TALES FROM THE VALE POLITICS
Tales From The Vale with Andy Palmer
Stalbridge back in the 60s and 70s was a bustling village. Roughly half the size it is now, the main street was full of shops and we had some great characters. Probably top of the list was Reverend Frederick Saunders (shortened to ‘Derek’) – an eccentric, likeable, scatter-brain of a vicar resembling Alistair Sim, who’s enduring legacy of forgetfulness and haplessness still keeps village elders entertained. Typically, once a month he trooped us primary school kids, delighted with the diversion from lessons, up to the church, only to find he’d again forgotten the enormous brass key – so we kids would again amuse ourselves among the gravestones while he dashed down to the enormous Rectory just behind the wall by the Stalbridge market cross (officially ‘the finest market cross in Dorset,’ says Hilary Townsend, author and broadcaster), now The Old Rectory Care Home. And come the time for his sermon, he’d start to look a bit panicky and search his pockets, a benign smile in place, until it dawned on him that his notes were, again, back at the Rectory, so he’d Image: Reverend Frederick Saunders courtesy of Stalbridge Archive Society
extemporise in an entertaining way, pretending to refresh his memory by looking at non-existent notes on the lecturn. We all knew he’d forgotten them. He always did. The Rectory is where I first tasted ginger wine. I was nine and it was at Christmas carols, held in a cavernous room that was definitely a few degrees centigrade below the freezing outside air. The ‘heating’ came from a minute paraffin stove that absolutely stank. Rev Saunders drove around in a battered old slide-door Dormobile the colour of butterscotch Angel Delight. It was battered and scraped because he was forever driving or reversing into buildings, telegraph posts, walls and the few parked cars there were in a Britain barely out of post-war austerity – rationing didn’t end when we finally clobbered Johnny Hun, it continued for another nine years, ending at midnight 4th July 1954. Some youngsters moaned about ‘austerity Britain’ after the financial crisis of 2008 – they should have been around for the real austerity and what followed. London’s Imperial War Museum, at the very top floor, has a wonderful, nostalgic replica of a 1940s home – stark, barely furnished. I was overwhelmed by it. That was the house I grew up in.
The Rev Saunders caused much mirth when, on a typical occasion, he drove into the petrol station (still there, and brilliantly
run by very friendly staff), went and paid for five quids worth of petrol, then drove away without putting any gas in the tank. He then phoned the garage for assistance ten minutes later when his car spluttered to a halt for want of fuel. On a later occasion, which thrilled the village, he survived accidentally driving off the road up at Thornhill. But he was impressed at how his car was efficiently towed out of the field - through a hedge - and showed the greatest cooperation with the local policeman, PC Spencer Meacham, whose son, also Spencer, was a mate of mine. Yes, we had a village constable who lived opposite The Green in an official ‘police house’ with official police light and notice board. How very Dixon of Dock Green.
Another character was the head of St Mary’s school Geoff Mallet, who lived in Snowdon House in Gold Street, probably one of the loveliest and architecturally distinguished streets in all Dorset. Worth a slow, appreciative walk up and down. We school kids liked our headmaster. I had the added advantage of seeing Geoff in a social context as my mother, Audrey Palmer, was an infant teacher at the school and she and my father were friends with Geoff and his rather brisk PE teacher wife, Molly.
